An Orchestra of Minorities review: Chigozie Obioma novel has Nigeria at its core

By Sarah Dempster

"The fathers of old say that without light, a person cannot sprout shadows", and with this, Chigozie Obioma uses the poetic language of Ibo storytelling to interrogate the light and the dark of human nature in his great, second novel, An Orchestra of Minorities. His first, The Fishermen, was longlisted for the Booker.

Illustration: Jim Pavlidis

Chinonso is the 29-year-old man at the centre of a tale narrated by his own chi, an entity somewhere between a soul and a guardian angel in Ibo cosmology. Obioma's work rivals the epic proportions of Greek mythology, where a spiritual and earthly landscape lays bare the petulance, joy, and shame of humanity.

The novel opens with Chinonso's chi before Chukwu, the supreme god of the Ibo religion. Chinonso's chi announces, "I stand before you here in the magnificent court of Bechykwu, here in Eluigwe, the land of eternal, luminous light, where the perpetual song of the flute serenades the air … Chukwu, creator of all, I concede that I have done something out of the ordinary by coming here now to testify while my host is still alive".

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Chigosie Obioma's new novel An Orchestra of Minorities is a robustly Afrocentric story.Credit:Jason Keith

Chinonso's eloquent chi pleads the case of his host, who is accused of manslaughter. Interceding on behalf of his host to avoid retribution from the great earth goddess, his chi recounts the previous five years of Chinonso's life as a man of "instinct and passion".

Assailed by grief from a young age after the death of his mother, his father, and abandonment by his sister, the softness of Chinonso's character is underscored by his doting relationship with birds, particularly those he tends as a poultry farmer. After buying two such birds at the market, on the journey home, Chinonso "caught the terrifying vision of a woman attempting to scale the bridge" in order to jump off into the raging river below. Chinonso reasons that "nothing is enough for somebody to die like that. Nothing", and when she steps back on to terra firma at his entreaties, "he knew at once that this was a deeply wounded woman".

The woman, Ndali, subsequently meets Chinonso in a series of random encounters in Umuahia and is fascinated by the simple life he leads tending to his chickens. With a powerful father who is both a chief and a doctor, and her own schooling completed in England, Ndali has both the financial and cultural means to live anywhere she pleases. But Ndali is a character who does not laud European culture as superior, even though this perspective remains oddly prevalent in many examples of literature.

Instead, she is a global citizen who is overwhelmingly drawn to the earthy Nigerian culture embodied by Chinonso, who prefers to speak "the language of the old fathers". By contrast, Ndali speaks "the language of the white man" often and "the language of the old fathers" less, because she does not want to degrade the language with her lack of fluency.

An Orchestra of Minorities. By Chigozie Obiama.

Revelling in the daily duties associated with Chinonso's compound, his chi observes that "although Ndali herself was training to be a pharmacist, sometimes wearing lab coats in some of the photos she showed him … she plucked with ease the overgrown feathers of the fowls. She harvested eggs whenever she visited in the early mornings or stayed over at his house."

Ndali's quest for self-betterment spans the old and new traditions of Nigeria. But central to her betterment is Chinonso and his cultural ties to ages past. Enamoured with both him and her new life, she linguistically elevates his status from a "poor farmer" to a "shepherd of birds".

The evolution of their relationship is, in part, illustrated by the alien cultural cues that Ndali brings to his compound, such as "the camera … from the White Man's country, which she called a 'Polaroid Camera'. Her handbag was still by her side, and her shoes, which she referred to simply as 'heels', were still on, as if poised to leave soon."

The way Obioma has constructed Chinonso's thoughtful perspective precisely captures the way we all learn unfamiliar cultural cues, both in terms of objects and gestures: by contextualising the moment and committing it to memory, ready to be drawn on when that object or gesture is seen again. In this way, there is a striking Afrocentrism and universality that sit side by side in his novel.

There is no doubt that Chinonso's simple agricultural life stands in stark contrast to Ndali's own wealthy family, with their "fancy degrees", servants, and fleet of luxury cars. Despite these differences, when Chinonso's chi meets Ndali's chi, who is "luminous … covered with uli symbols, and … covered with beads and strings of cowries" she announces that "my host has erected a figurine in the shrine of her heart". Thus, Ndali's love for Chinonso is articulated in Ibo cultural terms. Elsewhere in the novel, the juxtaposition of Christianity and Ibo cosmology is frequent. But the narratorial framework for the story remains decidedly Ibo, and consequently, Ibo spirituality is given omnipresence in Obioma's novel.

However, Ndali's parents disapprove of the relationship and humiliate Chinonso on several occasions. They call him "foolish … hippopotamus, [and] mock his clothes". At a party celebrating Ndali's father's 60th birthday, when Chinonso sits behind the family to avoid their displeasure, a servant assumes that he is a gateman who has stolen away to join the party. Thought to be lax in his duties, the commanding servant walks him to the gate with a horsewhip in hand, stating "this is your job".

When he is discovered by Ndali, the pair drive home, and "she, like him, had been gravely wounded" by the scene. The strident class divisions that wound them are the same divisions that ultimately compel Chinonso to transcend these confines which, quite simply, restrict his ability to be happy.

To win the family's favour and Ndali's hand, Chinonso resolves to get a "fancy degree" for himself from the University of Cyprus. Ndali's entreaties for him to stay in Umuahia are fruitless. Helped by his old school friend Jamike, Chinonso sells everything he owns for the venture. He states plainly to Ndali that "I never wanted to go back to school, but that is the only way I can be with you … I love you very much, but see what they are doing to me. See how they disgraced me". At his imminent departure and the loss of their simple life "his joy … sprung leaks in response to Ndali's sorrow", accentuating the heartfelt bond between the two characters.

The chi's narration illustrates rural Nigeria as the heart of the world, and when Chinonso goes to Cyprus, he frequently dreams of a journey back to that heart. Chinonso's odyssey is not populated with Cyclopes​ or sirens, but, tricksters, university bureaucracy, and structural violence. Like Odysseus, he finds himself profoundly alone on an island, longing to return to the woman and the land that he loves.

An Orchestra of Minorities evokes the same approach to storytelling that Toni Morrison defined in an interview in the 1990s, when she talked about the domination of the white gaze in literature. In the interview, she recalled when she read American books from the '40s and '50s as a child, it was clear that the white narrator was talking to a white person just over her shoulder, because there were cultural cues that the narrator did not explain for her. Morrison said that when she began reading the Afrocentric literature of Chinua Achebe and Bessie Head, the Afrocentric perspective they offered was "profound".

In the same way, An Orchestra of Minorities assumes the absolute centrality of Chinonso, Ndali, the Nigerian people, and Nigeria. All other characters are peripheral as their significance is considered under the Afrocentric gaze. In Obioma's novel, the author peppers the narrative with Ibo phrases and cultural cues, which remind a white readership that this is a robustly Afrocentric story. Chinonso's story is not given meaning by the white gaze; rather, the author creates a world that has always been, and invites us in to consider it just as it is.